To Labor and to Wait
by GadFlyGirl
Summary: Five snapshots from the perspectives of various workers in the Houses of Healing, just prior to the Siege of Minas Tirith. A sidebar to "Fallen," a longer work in progress, but also stands on its own.
1. The Surgeon

War comes at last to Minas Tirith, or so I am told: I have scarce left these walls for the past two days.

_Prepare_, we are told, and so I do. I stand in this quiet room and set my knives upon the table, one by one. I move down the line, from the smallest scalpel to the largest saw; the weight of each handle against my palm is like a verse in an old song. This was not the craft I would have chosen so many years ago, had that decision been mine. I once wished to be an archivist, to sort books instead of blades.

"That is mine to do, sir," my apprentice says as he comes through the doorway, embarrassed to catch his master at such a menial task. He stands there, all large eyes and nervous hands, and I wish for the hundredth time that he were not so young. In half a day's time we will both be up to our wrists in blood.

_Prepare_, they tell us. _Settle_ _your accounts and your affairs_: It would seem we go to war as if going to our graves.

I was far from being my father's favorite son, nor for my part did I love him as much as I might have. He sent me to this city when I was seventeen, and since then I have been breathing the scent of old stone. At times my lungs still ache for want of the sea air: I suppose that is the most persistent of my afflictions.

I test the knife-blades lightly against my fingertips. I know full well that these edges are keen enough, but such is the force of habit. I turn to face the boy.

"It is well, Laeron," I smile to him. "Go and rest."

So I will prepare, as they tell me. I will settle my affairs and accounts. My father sent me from my books and from the ocean, but at the last I am not unsatisfied. I have discovered that the body has its own stories; the unraveling of skin and sinew tells its own tale, as real as any ink and parchment. Death has its own secrets, as well; if indeed it finds us in these Houses, we, too, will learn them quickly enough. After twenty years I am too weary to hold a grudge; all the steps that brought me here were laid down for me by others. From that, at least, I can take some comfort. I set the last of the knives before me.

_Prepare_. So I have.


	2. The Herbalist

The air grows colder, and we stock our storerooms with herbs and drugs. My days are filled with the work: boiling and crushing, powdering and bottling. I can name the plants as their leaves slip through my fingers: here is the mild tang of chamomile, and before that the hard earth-scent of the dried parsley, and ere that, I touched the sweet fire-smell of cloves. I have forgotten their colors, save for the pale flashes that come to me in dreams, but that is no matter: to be an herbalist, one needs not her eyes.

Even when I was younger, when my eyes were better, my vision still was poor. Now it is all but gone. At times I can discern some shapes, some movement—darkness converging in darkness. That, too, is no matter; I walk the halls of these Houses, walk the spokes and wheels of our gardens, as straight and surely as any sighted woman. If I had need of it, I could even venture into the City, itself, and know my path, stone circle on stone circle. I know the others before they speak, by the sound of their footsteps and the noise of their movements: the soft rustle of the girls' skirts, the fussing and fidgeting of the restless men and the slow measured breathing of the calm ones.

I dread not the creeping darkness that everyone here speaks of in anxious whispers. I walk in blackness; there is nothing to fear there. Instead, I fear endings and emptiness. Even as they clutch at stems and flowers, my hands tremble at the thought of hollow rooms, ruined passages and vacant spaces. Nothing to hold but ashes and nothing to breathe but smoke. Above all others that is the thought that makes me grow cold.


	3. The Messenger

"Be swift about it, lad." The Warden of the Houses places a folded piece of parchment in my hand. The wax seal is still soft. Father told me that I would have the best job, since I would be privy to the all the news the City has to tell, but so far all the messages I have taken are like this: closed shut, so that I cannot peek in, even if I wished to.

All the same, I bow and say "Yes, sir," as I always do, and then I hurry along to the Citadel as I have been told. A part of me wishes to linger in the Houses a few moments more; it has become one of my favorite places on the Sixth Circle, for it is always full of people. Also, there are some kindly women here who seem to dote on me a great deal, although I do not say this to the other boys lest they think me some sort of coddled baby. Which I am not: I must keep brave and strong for my City, as Father said.

Father knows I can be brave when I have need of it, but Mother did not want me to stay here. She begged him to make me go with her and my sisters to the coast—she even wept, which frightened me, for Mother never cries—but Father stood firm, and said I could do what I liked, for I was a strong lad and must not be treated as a girl or an infant. Mother left one week ago, and I have not seen Father for nearly two days; his company guards the Second Circle, and I have heard that there is still much to prepare on the lower levels.

I make my way through the Sixth Circle, clutching the Warden's message tightly. Most places are not so busy as the Houses; the City is so different now, and so quiet, as if the very walls were holding their breath. We boys are a company unto ourselves, and we can play in the streets as we please, with no one to scold us. At first we played at every free moment we could find: we explored the empty courtyards, ran footraces in the deserted alleys, peered in through the cracks between the boards that cover some of the windows. But now we do not play so much, or so loudly; after a while our shouts began to sound strange against the silence.

My footsteps echo as I go up to the Citadel. I do not mind that, for before the evacuations I had never much heard the noise of my own walking, and now I am still growing used to it. Tonight I will eat my supper with the other boys in the barracks, sitting in a row at the long tables there, with the soldiers and guardsmen all around. I used to pretend to be a warrior for Gondor with my friends, but now we are all proud to say that that is the one game for which we no longer have any use.


	4. The Guardsman

"Do not look at it," she tells me, and of course I have to look as soon as she says this. I let my gaze go to the table between us, where my hand rests limply, palm up. The girl's dark head is bent over it. Her face, like mine, is impassive. She is intent upon her needle and her thread; a row of stitches is growing over the long gash in my skin. I would not call it pleasant, but I take a grim sort of pleasure in knowing I have borne much worse in the past without complaint—a soldier's pleasure.

It happened this morning: my hand slipped as I was honing my dagger—a thing that has never occurred in all the years I have carried a blade. I clutched at my bloody palm with my right hand and cursed myself hoarse—cursed myself, and my dagger, and my aching limbs, and the dimness of the battlements at dawn, and the early spring chill that had seeped through my cloak. And above all else I cursed the Black Land itself, that it had found Gondor in her hour of weakness, and that now I must battle its minions with one hand maimed. It went on in this fashion until my brother gripped my shoulder and sent me to the Houses. "Get you some proper care, while you still are able," he said, gently. "But first," he added, "get you out of earshot. I do not care to listen to you howl all the morrow."

And I suppose it is good to sit here, biting back my pain, and it is good to have a girl sit opposite me. Strange to see a girl, though, for we are at war, are we not? I let the cool air fill me, though now the black death-rotted wings graze at the edges of my mind, as they often seem to do when all else is still, just as the fell cries bloom in my ears when all else is quiet.

I suppress a shudder just as she is putting in the final stitch—or very nearly suppress it.

"I told you not to look," she chides me. _Ah, if only 'twere so easy as that_. There is a neat seam running down the center of my palm, like a newly mended garment. I wonder, does she believe she will live to see the ending of this war?

"Thank you," I say.

"You are welcome." She ties off the thread without meeting my eye, then swiftly lifts my wrist and places a light kiss on the edge of my hand. "Now get you gone, soldier."


	5. The Healer

The sky is turned the color of cold iron. The light has faded; still must we work, and so the Warden bids us kindle the torches we save for the night-hours.

I walk down the corridor with a single torch of my own, feeding flames to the sconces one by one. They tell us that the first wounded will arrive soon; after that, my labors will not be so easy as this.

_Come now_, Ioreth said this morning. _For we must not spend ourselves in fear, nor trouble ourselves into uselessness—no, but seek solace where we may find it, so we might offer comfort in our turn when the time comes._ Ioreth. After all these years it takes not a great effort not to heed her unending homely prattle, but always does she speak true, in the end. And today, no different.

The fire warms my face and hands, and I remember. _Aye, Ioreth, but what meant you by comfort?_ Surely not the comfort sought by the men who came to the lower circles where I spent my girlhood: worn fingers grasping for whatever warm piece of flesh they could take in an ill-lighted room. Cold comfort, coin-bartered comfort, respite in distraction.

I give am no longer a giver of such reprieve; I left the taverns years ago. Today I kept my eyes fixed on the tender blades of grass in the gardens, the solid winding of clean linen through my fingers, the faces of the children who yet remain with us while their parents soldier or flee, that all of this might make gentle my hands and my voice, and strengthen my resolve. _For we must not spend ourselves in fear_, and indeed we _cannot_, even if we wished it. For a body cannot spend every waking moment in terror, nor every slumbering moment in nightmares. There is tedium to fill the spaces between, tedium and labor and waiting, above all else; the small trappings of life that we keep with us, so long as life itself endures.

The hallway swims with light and shadow. Soon the men will come to us, and we will hasten to their aid and lay our hands over them and do whatever things we must do to keep death at bay. Help I can offer, and comfort, and even solace. Whether or not the same is true for hope, I will see by and by.

Soon the corridor is fully lit, and I rest at its ending for a moment. A bit absurdly, I admire my handiwork, as if these busy fires were some craft of my own devising. And then I turn to go, still bearing my own light before me; there is much to be done.


End file.
